


The Other Thing

by QueerOnTilMorning



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23823547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerOnTilMorning/pseuds/QueerOnTilMorning
Summary: Written for a dear friend, who requested a G-rated fic for their kid. With love.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 22
Kudos: 193





	The Other Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a dear friend, who requested a G-rated fic for their kid. With love.

It's the middle of the night, and there's a knock on Richie's window.

He's lying awake in bed, trying to cry without making any noise. The sharp peal of knuckles on glass is thunderous by comparison.

Richie sits bolt upright, his mind racing through a list of horrible possibilities: it's the clown, it's the werewolf, it's Bowers escaped from Juniper Hill and looking for payback. But when he looks out the first-floor window, he just sees Eddie, in a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.

Richie's heart sighs with relief for one moment, before he remembers that Eddie is scarier than any of those other things.

Still, he can't leave him standing outside in the cold. He scrubs at his still-wet eyes with the heel of his hand, unlatches the window, and yanks it up. Then, before Eddie has a chance to scramble over the sill, Richie gets back in bed, turning to face the wall.

He hears Eddie thump to the floor, breathing hard. "Really? You're not even going to help me?"

Richie shrugs, hoping Eddie can read his scowl through his shoulder blades. "I didn't ask you to come over."

"Like I've _ ever _ asked you to sneak through  _ my _ window," Eddie snaps, which, okay, fair. Richie does that a lot. Eddie's never returned the favor until now, though, and for the first time Richie understands just how strange it is to have someone in your bedroom unexpectedly.

It's like Eddie is standing in the middle of Richie's brain: a kaleidoscope of comics, loud Hawaiian shirts, horror paperbacks, half-filled notebooks, piles of pictures he's cut out of magazines but not yet gotten around to tacking on the wall. Richie feels painfully revealed, like just by being here Eddie will learn things Richie doesn't want him to know.

"What's going on, Richie?" Eddie's small voice is very loud in the silent room.

"Nothing. I'm sleeping," Richie mumbles.

"You're not sleeping, you're ignoring me. You've been ignoring me at school all week, you haven't gone to the clubhouse, you didn't even sit with the rest of us at lunch--" Without turning around, Richie knows Eddie is gesturing for emphasis, chopping one hand into the palm of the other with every transgression he lists.

"I'm not allowed to want some time to myself?"

"I know you went over to Stan's house to play video games on Tuesday," Eddie says. He sounds so pained, Richie can't stand it. "You're not avoiding everyone, you're avoiding _ me. _ "

"Why does it matter?" Richie asks, trying to keep the tears out of his voice. "You can just go hang out with your new girlfriend."

There's silence. Then Eddie says, "What, Shelby? She's not my girlfriend. I'm just going to the stupid dance with her."

"Whatever," says Richie. "Same difference. She wants to be your girlfriend. She will be soon."

"Richie, is--" He hears Eddie swallow hard. "Is that why you're mad? Do you, like." He pauses for a long moment, during which Richie is frozen, not even daring to breathe. "Do you like Shelby or something?"

"No," Richie laugh-sobs. "Oh my God." Shelby's nice, he guesses. She's kind of a goof-off who sits in the back of the class making jokes, like Richie. She's probably the kind of girl he might like, if-- Anyway.

"Because I'm really, it's not, I don't care that much." Richie buries his head in his pillow. Eddie's kindness is a special kind of unbearable right now. "I can tell her I can't go, that my mom won't let me, and then you could--"

"Stop it. No."

"Then what?" Eddie says, and he sounds close to tears himself. "What did I do? How do I fix it? You're my best friend."

Very quietly, Richie says, "No I'm not."

He hears Eddie suck in a long breath. Then, "What?"

"I'm not. I'm not your best friend. I'm not a good friend." He knows this is true. A good friend wouldn't be so angry at Eddie for getting a girlfriend, or even a date to the spring dance. A good friend wouldn't burn up with jealousy at the thought of Eddie's hand touching Shelby's waist when they slow dance. A good friend would want Eddie to be happy. Normal.

That's not what Richie wants at all.

"Of course you are. Why would you say that?" Now Eddie sits down on the bed beside him, resting his hand on Richie's shoulder, warm through his thin t-shirt. "You're my _ best friend, _ " he says again, insistent. "You saved my life."

Richie sighs. "That was a long time ago."

"I don't just mean that," Eddie says. "I mean… God, Richie, you know what my mom's like." He stops and waits for Richie to say something gross, but Richie doesn't have the energy tonight. "She's been wanting to pull me out of school for years. She'd just keep me home with her, full time. Do you know what that would be like?"

Richie can imagine, and it's awful. It's grotesque. It's as bad as anything the clown ever came up with to torment them. Fierce little Eddie, the spark in him slowly smothered to death, buried in the crushing gloom of Sonia Kaspbrak's house.

"But I keep fighting her about it, and I keep winning," Eddie says. "Because every day I go to school, I get to see you, and that's…" He takes a shuddering breath. "That reminds me she doesn't control everything. You know? You're--there's still a part of my life that's just mine."

Richie snuffles into his pillow. He wants so badly to say  _ it's me, I'm yours, I'm just yours. _ But he swallows the words down with the tears.

"Richie, come on, say something," Eddie pleads. "I don't know what I'd do without you. Just tell me what I did and I'll fix it."

But Eddie can't fix this, can't fix the thing inside of Richie that's wrong, the broken compass arrow that points to what he shouldn't want. "I'm sorry, Eds," he whispers.

"What happened?" Eddie's crying now, his voice thick and snotty. "Don't you--don't you like me anymore?"

It's too much for Richie to take. The way Eddie sounds so  _ scared, _ so unsure of himself, when he's the bravest person Richie has ever known. If Richie doesn't explain, he realizes, Eddie will always blame himself. He'll always think he did something wrong, or that there's something wrong with him, and that's… that's just unacceptable. Eddie is _ perfect. _

Richie would rather be hated than let Eddie hate himself.

So he sits up and turns to face Eddie. The other boy's eyes are huge and dark in his pointy little face, and they terrify Richie more than anything he saw in the caverns under Neibolt Street.

"Of course I like you, Eds," he says, knowing he's about to destroy something he treasures, feeling the fault lines ready to split his heart. "That's the whole problem."

"Why is that a problem?" Eddie says.

Richie, for once, tells the truth. He cups Eddie's face in his hands, leans in, and presses his lips to Eddie's.

For a long moment--the exact length of three heartbeats, Richie counts, but also definitely at least an hour--neither of them moves.

Then Eddie pulls away. Richie doesn't even try to brace himself, because he knows that what's coming will destroy him.

"Richie," Eddie says. His voice sounds like a rock skipped inexpertly across water, briefly floating before the inevitable plunge.

"I'm sorry," Richie says, and Eddie kisses him.

His lips are feather-light and tentative on Richie's, but it's  _ real, _ it's unmistakable, Eddie Kaspbrak has closed the space between them of his own free will to put his mouth on Richie's mouth. Eddie's lips are soft; his breath smells like toothpaste. Picturing him carefully brushing and flossing before sneaking out of his house makes Richie ache with tenderness.

Eddie's hands land on Richie's shoulders, one thumb stroking his collarbone, and it's the most intense feeling Richie's ever experienced. If this is a trick, he thinks--if a moment from now Eddie turns into the clown and swallows him whole--it's worth it.

When Eddie breaks the kiss again, he doesn't go far, just leans his forehead against Richie's. "That's why you've been avoiding me?" he asks quietly.

"Yeah," Richie admits. "I'm sorry, Eds."

"Richie, it's okay."

"No, I-- being friends with you should be enough for me. I shouldn't be thinking about you this way, but I just can't stop. I'm so sorry."

Richie feels Eddie's eyebrows draw together against his own. It's a weird sensation, and it might make him giggle if he weren't so distracted. "Wait, that's what you're sorry about? You're sorry you  _ like _ me?"

"Well, yeah." Richie's confused. "Shouldn't I be?"

"No!" Eddie pulls back far enough to look Richie in the eyes. "No, you shouldn't. I'm not. I…" He squeezes Richie's shoulder. "I'm _ happy _ about this."

Richie's pulse is loud in his ears. "You are?"

"Of course I am! I thought you hated me!" Impossibly, Eddie grins. "This is way better."

"I thought you'd hate me. If you knew."

Eddie presses another soft kiss to the corner of Richie's mouth. "I don't."

"I don't hate you either," Richie says. He's never seen Eddie's freckles from this close before, and God, they're beautiful. "I more, uh, the other thing."

Pink flares under the freckles. "I the other thing too."

Richie's face is hot. He feels like screaming and running in circles and slam-dunking the moon. He wants to tell a thousand jokes, but he can't think of a single one. All he can say is, "Eddie."

"So I'll tell Shelby I can't go to the dance," Eddie says decisively.

"Really? But we, uh-- I don't think--"

"No, me neither," says Eddie. "We can't go together. We can't tell people."

Richie nods. But then he has to ask, "Tell people what? What is it we're not telling?"

"About… this! You know!" Eddie's flustered. He's _ so cute _ when he's flustered.

"That we're  _ boyfriends?" _ Richie asks in a singsong voice.

Eddie tries to glare at him, but a smile breaks through. "Gross. I guess."

"So will you  _ not _ go to the dance with me? We can skip it and watch a movie at my house, or hang out in the Barrens." The words feel strange in Richie's mouth. He's not suggesting anything they haven't done before, of course, but he means it differently than he ever has before, and Eddie  _ knows _ that. For a moment, he feels vulnerable and exposed, almost afraid.

Eddie's smile widens, and Richie's fear disappears. "That sounds perfect," he says. "It's a date."

Richie wishes Eddie would stay all night, that he could fall asleep listening to his gentle breathing, but Eddie's anxious about getting home before Sonia notices he's gone. They hug for a long time before Eddie climbs out the window.

"Hey Eds," Richie whisper-shouts, and Eddie turns back just as Richie leans over the windowsill. He catches his lips in one more kiss.

"I… the other thing," Richie says breathlessly, dazed by the reflected starlight in Eddie's eyes.

"I know," says Eddie. "I do too."


End file.
